For use in vehicles, it is desirable to have multi-functional (also known as reconfigurable) controls in the center stack portion of the instrument panel in order to best provide electronic and telemetric functions to the driver. Typical approaches today utilize touch screens, menu selection via joystick like rotary devices and icon based screens with physical switches around the periphery thereof. All of these approaches have significant disadvantages, and none allows any reconfiguration of classical controls such as knobs and switches most familiar to the vast majority of the motoring public. These problems have recently been described in a SAE paper co-authored by the inventor entitled Reconfigurable Tactile Control Displays, which was presented at the Convergence 2004 Conference in Detroit, Mich. in October 2004.
In my co-pending applications listed above I have described a new form of low cost control system which allows reconfiguration of common control details such as knobs sliders and switches, an approach which avoids the inherently un-natural (at least for many) menu based systems, and provides much more tactile feed back than all of them. I call it a Reconfigurable Tactile Control Display, or RTD.
The RTD is elegantly simple in concept, and in a preferred embodiment utilizes machine vision. However substantial projection display and machine vision R and D work is required to meet cost targets for its intended primary automotive instrument panel application.
There exists therefore a need to provide such reconfiguration capability with at least some of the RTD's advantages such that vehicles and other applications could be equipped in the near term, with minimal r and d required. This application describes a solution which may if desired, utilize conventional flat panel displays and conventional control readout electronics. It also may be used with OLED displays of the future, and the rear projection displays as well, if desired. And in some embodiments it too uses machine vision to determine control positions.
A group of patents and applications by Denny Jaeger, also with Kenneth Twain, describe reconfiguration of control details on flat panel displays, as well as my own U.S. Pat. No. 5,982,352, a division of which Ser. No. 09/435,854 is co-pending at this time. Of these patents the only ones that may practically operate with standard LCD (and therefore inexpensive and affordable) display devices are those having some sort of overlay member placed on the front of the display screen, to which, in the Jaeger et al cases, a base member for the knob is mounted. (see U.S. Pat. No. 5,936,613). In the Jaeger et al disclosure, the base member and/or the knob itself contains electronic readout devices whose information is communicated via wires or other conductors to signal conditioning and analysis equipment elsewhere.
This approach has the disadvantage that the use of an overlay member and the base member makes the knob stick up higher off the screen which can be aesthetically displeasing, and results in parallax and other reading problems of seeing the programmable reconfigurable lettering or other labeling on the screen adjacent the knob, or within the knob if it transparent, or slotted as I have disclosed. An other problem exists if one then wishes to locate a conventional touch screen sensing member (e.g., such as made by 3M company) underneath the knob and in front of the screen, in which case the problem is accentuated, and in the Jaeger et al invention also made more difficult because the base member must then attach to the touch screen. In addition the base member and knob must be of a special design, adding cost.
Jaeger et al have disclosed a system where a knob is located within the confines of the display proper. However, in some applications, such as in a car, when a rectangular LCD flat panel is used as the display, there is a need to maximize the display space available for video or data. Unlike my hitherto disclosed RTD invention, which in preferred embodiments uses a projection display, the LCD flat panel displays become considerably more costly as the display size rises. In addition flat panels become uglier to look at due to their flat nature. Thus it is likely that LCD screens in cars will be limited in size, and thus space on their display area will be at a premium. The large flat glass front piece of an LCD screen can pose a safety hazard as well.
It should also be pointed out that the Jaeger et al knob disclosure deals only with sensing knob position, and does not allow for using the knob to switch high current devices, for example to provide for direct switching of currents to motors in the vehicle. In addition, and also not contemplated in the prior art, the knob of the instant invention may alternatively be used to mechanically operate certain functions directly, such as opening heat mixing doors or valves or air distribution ports, when manually turned by the operator
Relative to the new types of sensing of knobs and position controls as well as touch on the front of led displays through the use of machine vision from the rear and special backlights, there is no known prior art other than the aforementioned Jaeger and Jaeger et al. group to the extent it is germane.
Some of the game aspects of the invention herein are also shown in another application of mine, Publication Number 20020036617, as well as my U.S. Pat. No. 5,982,352. The disclosures of both of these are incorporated by reference in their entirety.